When my son's developmental pediatrician first read his history before actually meeting him she thought he had Asperger's. In addition to the usual questions I had to answer on our first visit, I had attached copies of my message board posts from when my son was three to five years old and I had mentioned the reading at 2 1/2, talking like a little professor, ability to memorize several hundred words of script more quickly than some teenagers in his acting class when he was just 4 1/2. I think the fact that he has hypotonia (the reason we were seeing her) made it seem likely that he had Aspergers. When she talked to him she said that he absolutely did not have it. He is a very social child, easily makes jokes to fit whatever situation he is in at the moment, and has no trouble looking people in the eye. People often tell me that he talks like an adult, especially when he joins in adult conversations about things that are happening in the news and he seems to know more about it than any of the adults.
The developmental pediatrician told us that some people might think he has ADHD because he is very high energy and has trouble sitting still for long periods of time, but he does not have ADHD.
He is not bipolar, but he says he thinks I might be. He likes to read his sister's psychology textbook and has diagnosed me with all kinds of mental disorders, which is why I almost hid this book from him.
OCD runs in my family. My son is very particular about certain things. His sister, who probably has OCD, thinks he has it, and I told the developmental pediatrician about some things that I thought might indicate OCD but she didn't diagnose him with that either.
My son gets very cranky if he goes more than two and a half hours without eating. I have to carry food with me and make sure he has a snack if we are out somewhere.
He seems not only hyperactive, but also hypersensitive. He has some sensory integration issues. He is sensitive to smells, he hears things that I don't notice. For instance, yesterday he stepped on a dead cricket at a fast food restaurant and the sound creeped him out so much that it took him several minutes to get over it. He is sensitive to so many things. Swimming lessons are difficult because he can't stand water splashed in his face and he can't relax enough to float. He also has anxiety issues, but that's not unusual in my family.
My son still does not have any kind of diagnosis. We were only told that he has sensory issues, hypotonia, and he is gifted, but we don't know how highly because we can't afford testing. The doctor didn't recommend therapy, other than vision therapy for visual motor integration problems at the 1% level, maybe because our insurance doesn't pay for it. She just told me that I needed to get the Out of Sync Child Has Fun and do some of these activities with him and he wouldn't do them.
My outside-the-box son went to Kindergarten but wouldn't color in the lines, his handwriting was sloppy but could write with both hands, he watched the other kids play on the playground or talked to the teachers instead of playing, and he said school wasn't very educational. I asked a first grade teacher for advice and she recommended homeschooling because she thought he was highly gifted and would not get an appropriate education in our small town school. I have been homeschooling ever since and spending too much time online trying to find answers that I couldn't even get from doctors.
The mother of one of my son's best friends, also gifted but four years older, is a special ed teacher. She thought my son might benefit from "listening therapy" for his sensory issues but insurance won't pay for it, we can't afford it, and we would have to enroll my son in an inappropriate educational situation in order to get it through the school. She arranged for me to talk to a teacher at the school whose son also has sensory issues and visual motor integration problems and thought therapy was helping her son, but her son had problems reading and my son learned how to read on his own at 2 1/2, and I am not sure what listening therapy would do for my son and I can't afford it anyway so I guess it doesn't matter.
I don't know if some of my son's issues are just overexcitabilities (he appears to have all five) or if he needs therapy. I spend way too much time online trying to find answers. My son once said "Why can't you just accept me the way I am?" I think he sees my search for answers as a sign that I don't accept him the way he is. He has called himself an anomaly or "un-normally" as he likes to call it and even a freak and a geek but he says he is happy the way he is and we shouldn't worry what other people think.
But I think my special ed teacher friend and some other people I know would like to know what to call my son's differences. A lot of people seem to like labels and he doesn't have one. I have spent years looking at info on various syndromes and nothing fit perfectly and it makes it hard to plan for the future. Not only do I sometimes have difficulty figuring out what to do now for his education but also planning for the future. I think online classes might work for him. He took a free online class on the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe a while back and he liked it, but we are only using cosmeo.com now because he is interested in so many different things and it is only about $10.00 a month.
